An American Coup (Peoples Weekly World)
It didn't come at the point of a gun. It didn't come with jack-booted soldiers. It
came in lawyer's suits and justices' robes. The will of the people may never be known,
as the hero of the court, Justice Stevens wrote, but the identity of the loser is
perfectly clear.
The American people lost. Democracy was subverted.
It was subverted, as always, by a small grouping of right-wing extremists who knew
they couldn't win the old-fashioned way * by the majority votes of the American
people. It came in distorted arguments, confusing the issue, focusing on technical
details to make people's eyes glaze over. Equal protection from hanging chads, they
claimed, while the real issues of voting rights were denied.
Voting rights has a long history of struggle in this country. Justice Scalia was right
on one thing: Voting rights were not enshrined in the original Constitution. They were
was fought for. People died for the right.
The original voters were propertied white men, not working-class or poor white men.
Only property owners could vote. At that time, some people were property.
Bit by bit, struggle by struggle, it took long years of battles for the rights of
workers, women, Blacks and all minorities to win the right to vote. It took struggle
and unity of all the disenfranchised to win these rights.
So with some paper and ink, the ideological right-wing majority on the Supreme Court
wrote an opinion that seeks to send us back 150 years. It seeks to send us back to the
days of the selling out of Reconstruction, to the Tilden-Hayes compromise. Those are
the days that the extreme right and the new property owners, the monopoly
corporations, would like to see.
But another historical analogy is what Rev. Joseph Lowery, leader of the Southern
Christian Leadership Conference, told the Dec. 13 Tallahassee demonstration, when he
likened this ruling to the Dred Scott decision. That was a decision that "went down in
infamy," Lowery said, and this ruling will, too.
The American people won't let this decision stand. "Learned fools" is the common sense
phrase which lays bare the Supreme Court's decision. It is now the highest kangaroo
court in the land.
The American people will look back at this election and post-election days as a new
moment in the struggle for democracy. It will become clearer which forces stand for
democracy and its expansion and which forces stand for subversion and reaction.
No mandate, no honeymoon * people won't accept cavorting with thieves and liars.
George W. Bush may set an agenda to undo Social Security, public education, labor,
voting, civil and women's rights but people won't relinquish them.
With the New Year, new Congress and a newly-installed administration there will be new
and bigger struggles, with a new kind of multiracial labor and people's coalition
emerging. With this, an historic negative can be turned into an historic positive.
A coup has occurred. The majority will has been subverted. It was done with right-wing
spin doctors, lawyers and judges. It was done with fraud and corruption, racism,
anti-Semitism and intimidation. It was a very American coup.
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